We make use of cookies to enhance your user experience. By clicking "OK" without altering your cookie preferences, you are giving us your consent to use cookies. For further information, please read our information on the use of cookies.OK

Cracking games, rising stars

vor 2 StundenTakashi Inui (m.) has scored in each of unbeaten Frankfurt's last three games

Munich - GOAL! The Bundesliga Magazine is the DFL's weekly TV programme, offering an international audience a unique perspective on Germany's top flight on a regular basis throughout the season. In-depth previews of the upcoming league action, exclusive interviews, behind-the-scenes reports and much more besides.

Top Game

Werder Bremen's season looks to be slowly cranking into gear, just in time for the vist of their old adversaries Bayern Munich on Matchday 6. While this may not be the absolute top game it was for much of the previous decade, it remains a true Bundesliga classic nonetheless. Interestingly, each side has fared rather better on the other's turf than on their own in recent seasons. Bremen, long something of a bogey team for the men from the Bavarian capital, are in fact chasing their first victory, home or away, since a whopping 5-2 success in Munich four years ago. For their part, high-flying Bayern have won on four of the last five trips to the Weserstadion, sharing the points on the other. The form sheet suggests they might well add to that record this time around - although the hosts will of course have something to say on that matter.

In Focus

Few followers of the German game reckoned with Eintracht Frankfurt making quite such an impressive start after earning a quick-fire return to the Bundesliga under Armin Veh. The coach who led VfB Stuttgart to a surprise title success in 2007 made some astute signings ahead of the top-flight restart, none more so it would seem than that of Takashi Inui. Snapped up from VfL Bochum, whom he had joined from Cerezo Osaka a year earlier, the 24-year-old attacking midfielder perfectly symbolises Frankfurt's early form. After nabbing his first Bundesliga goal in the 3-2 win against HSV, he followed it up with a beauty to clinch a 2-1 victory at Nuremberg - and then a thumping header in the thrilling midweek draw with Dortmund.

Spotlight

Another Matchday 6 highlight is the battle of the Borussias, with champions Dortmund looking to get back in the winning groove at home to their namesakes from Mönchengladbach. And for one participant in particular, this is a game with a particular resonance - Marco Reus. Germany's current Player of the Year is now back in very familiar territory with his hometown club, whom he played for at youth level. But it was at Gladbach that he shot to national prominence and made the breakthrough into the senior Germany team. The early-season reunion with his former teammates this weekend will certainly be no run-of-the-mill afternoon's work for the all-round attacking talent.

3 Minutes with...

...Rudi Völler. One of Europe's most prolific strikers throughout the 1980s and into the mid-90s and a World Cup winner with Germany in 1990, Völler hung up his boots with his final club, Bayer Leverkusen, to take over as sporting director there. After a four-year stint in charge of Germany, during which he guided them to runners-up spot at the 2002 World Cup finals in Japan and South Korea, and a brief spell coaching another of his former clubs, AS Roma, he once more took up the reins as sporting director at Leverkusen, maintaining the club's policy of integrating exciting young talents into an ambitious, attack-orientated team.

All this, more match previews and profiles of Marko Arnautovic and Franck Ribery in this week's edition of GOAL!